But... what would we do without Facebook?

It's something a friend asked recently.

Facebook has almost single-handedly taken over the internet in my opinion. Only a handful of years after it's creation did other websites start emulating their super post modern minimalist design. MySpace died a horrible death; I liked MySpace. *sadface* But for some reason a page with less options, less customization, less... well everything... exploded and eats up more of people's hours than anything but the Google search engine.

And they're getting scary. First it was the maps thing that tracked where you were posting things from by examining your IP location. I don't know where that thing has gone, but I hope it's far away and forever. Now their app is going to have the option to listen to you, aaaand I really just hate having to reset all my preferences every few weeks. It never fails that something turns itself on to email me every hour, pages I've never been to show up in my "liked" feed, people wondering why I posted something so incredibly right wing when all I did was like a picture of a kitten my friend shared that gave some political page the right to post for me for some reason I can't fathom... *deep breath* Then there's just the crap.

I've been thinking about saving all the pictures I've been tagged in that I don't have personal copies of, like my sister's wedding, and bailing off the Facebook ship.
But... it's so easy to see what people are doing and share little tidbits and pictures and Facebook owns all our content and... and... and... what would we do without Facebook?

What we did before it ever existed! We'll post blogs and use emails for more than spam catchers. Maybe, just maybe, we'll actually call one another to tell some one about our day. Also who said you can't put short posts on your blog?
Imgur is full of fun pictures and the Google engine is more than capable of finding all the memes. I don't see why Facebook has to be the center of our online socializing universe.
I have made more real relationships with people on forums than with people who I've met in real life and been Facebook friends with. I miss you FPians! I'll come back soon... I hope.

I don't need to shout things into the internet in short bursts of fire, my life is not an assault rifle. I don't need to have people click a little button approving of my choice of content to share. We don't need Facebook to keep the friends that matter to us.
I don't mind social networking. Honest. I just don't understand how we've let it blind us to the fact that we have other options, that if we really don't like it we can leave.

... then again that worked out really well for me and the blogger... didn't it? *laughs*

Till next time lovelies,
~the light heart lives long